Even Trump’s torch-like hair is the right metaphor for what his candidacy is: a Molotov Cocktail. Trump supporters are united in their detest of Hillary and the establishment and the irresistible desire to blow it up has blinded them into falling into the Trap. It should be evident by now that Donald Trump is an invention of the left, a hand-picked fatally egotistical dupe set up to be the only person Hillary could beat. Talk about a dream candidate, this one was cooking for a couple of decades. All these 30+ year-old accusations are the crescendo they never thought would be necessary to dredge up to beat the self-destructive narcissist.

All this was known years ago. Trump/Stern interviews alone were enough fodder to bury him. Bury him too early and a stronger, more rational candidate emerges so a desperate cadre of Hillary backers prop up the floozie. The breathing machine Trump needed to get through the primaries was the $3 billion in free press by the leftwing media, building up Trump, flattered by his wealth and celebrity and most of all his ratings. The other 16 Republican saps paid dearly for air time ads while Trump reaped free interviews, multiple guest appearance, start to end coverage of his speeches and every single controversy covered ad nauseum. The anti-Hillary crowd fell for the floozie like a cheap spy novel.

Trump rode the free ride into the nomination believing in true narcissist fashion he did it on his own. It’s the same vanity of denying his dad made him rich and connected before he even got started. The same vanity that leads him to attack the looks of his accusers rather than the substance. The eternal 12-year old child. Absent a video of Bill committing an undeniable crime, America is going to get Hillary in the White House. The sad thing is, after all this, he remains a less destructive and dangerous choice for America than Hillary.

Bob Dylan said it best: “The Masters make the rules for the Wise Men and the Fools.”

11/9, well, I missed that one a bit, pleasantly surprised the anger with the status quo was enough to overcome all the institutional barriers for a Trump win. Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania victories was very impressive hat trick. Now we have a chance for sane legislation and end of gridlock. Hope the Republicans don’t fumble this once in a generation opportunity to return power to the people.

We turned a blind eye to the Saudis who since 1979 have promoted, funded and exported the Wahhabi poison that threatens our way of life. Saudis knocked down our towers and attacked the Pentagon using our own equipment. They timed it beautifully between an indifferent Clinton and an unprepared Bush (aided by clueless intelligence services). In response, we attacked three other countries and borrowed billions from one enemy (China) to purchased fuel from our Saudi killers to prosecute 15 years worth of war on the symptoms of threat, not the cause. It has only spread the cancer.

If you are surprised or offended that thousands of people want to kill us, it’s time to seriously challenge your own understanding of how our leaders have long taken action contrary to American values that has earned us this scorn. When the Great Hypocrite bombs your village (by Saudi proxy) it is fertile ground for terrorists. It’s easy to cite the good we do the world but to the 5-year old Syrian boy covered in dust it ‘ain’t nothing but words’.

In spite of all we know, we now facilitate the indiscriminate slaughter of the Houthis in Yemen. Thousands of civilians die as we share logistics with the Saudis, and reload their bombers. The US has decided it’s good to favor Sunni over Shia even if it funds ISIL by default. It’s good for the weapon selling business. Twenty years from now, who will control the hearts of children raised with this reality. These are future suicide bombers in diapers. Tell your children to be on the lookout for them.

The anti-refugee hysteria on the part of many of my closest friends in government is distressing. It gives way to the worst impulses- fueling the likes of Donald Trump. None want the US to accept any responsibility for why they are at our doorstep : Obama’s willful abandonment of the Syrian people when timely support would have had great effect. (not to mention America’s support of two generations of genocidal sociopaths named Assad) We now hear that we ‘don’t have a dog in this fight’. Hell, we armed both dogs to the teeth! When senior Assad wiped out 30,000 of his own people, we didn’t flinch. Junior learned well. So now we reap the whirlwind. Like Bush 41 did to the Shia of Iraq, like Clinton did to the Tutsi’s in Rwanda and Bush 43 did to the moderate Sunni’s in Iraq, American presidents can facilitate mass slaughter by their failures to act. Obama now has his own slaughtered thousands that will forever stain his legacy. America will pay a price for decades to come.

American hands are as bloody as any in a century where we changed foreign governments at will (I say ‘we’ in the editorial sense in that we all own what is done in our name around the world). The CIA was responsible for countless coups and assassinations that doomed millions to slavery, torture, exile, oppression and despair. Pick the decade and pick the president and there is failure to respect the God-given rights of local populations that led us to where we are today. Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, Lumumba in the Congo, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic (the most justified), Diem in Vietnam, Goulart in Brazil, and Allende in Chile are the admitted ones. The current king of Jordan’s own grandfather was deposed in 1952 in favor of his father with CIA help. Clearly, it was the fashion at the time, and judging decades old decisions is tricky, but we can’t say “not our business” without some price to be paid. The hatred of the US by Muslims is a relatively new phenomenon birthed in the Carter administration. Before then such extreme views were snuffed out by local rulers but has not only been allowed to spread but the Saudis have indeed fueled the fire that rages today.

It’s an issue that would never have been complicated but for the serious decline in the collective integrity of the American people. We once left our homes unlocked and our lives relatively unguarded. Over the past forty years- we’ve seen steady erosion of standards once thought inviolable where moral relativity has sought its lowest common denominator. Vulgarity and violence are endemic. Start there. We are unable to shield our children from degrading culture at a time when the quality of parenting is the difference in success or jail. Life becomes cheap. Education is a joke. Emphasis on integrity and responsibility is nonexistent. Justice is for the rich and well-connected. Self-indulgence and self-pity is rampant, and feed by politicians who find job security in making dependents of their constituents. Perception controls reality and in a nation of 330 million, the Laws of Nature dictate that a tiny minority will act irrationally. Crazed shooters are now the norm.

We have to find better ways to stop those few because wholesale restrictions on guns is never going to work. We have to change the way we track and restrict mentally ill people. Unfortunately, for a handful of Americans, the right to own a gun should be restricted. A certain mental diagnosis should include a requirement that any gun ownership by that person have government review. Caregivers and family members would be held responsible for making accessible any weapons not so registered.

The enforcement of personal responsibility has to be stressed. I have long proposed that gun ownership should have the most stringent requirements for personal responsibility. Each gun should have a registered owner and with each gun would come absolute liability. Any criminal action by the weapon would be the liability of the owner. Liability would rest with the gun owner for an accidental or willful shooting by others, or if it is used in a crime without being discharged. How would a gun owner mitigate this strict liability? Liability would be mitigated or transferred according to the actions of the gun owner. A gun requiring a fingerprint technology to be fired would absolve the owner if the gun is taken and somehow used. Same would be true for a trigger lock. It puts the onus on the gun owner to secure his gun. It would make him a lot more care who borrows it, and who has access. The San Bernardino killings involved a neighbor giving them assault weapons without any notification requirements to authorities. No action seems to be pending against the provider of weapons. Under a strict liability law, the neighbor would have had to notify the government and get permission to sell or give the gun to Farook. This would end the business of guns changing hands privately without any ability for the government to know where they are going. It would end or reduce straw buyers and add restrictions to gun shows. When a few of these careless gun owners go down for the crimes committed by untracked guns, fewer will change hands. It’s one small solution of the many required to end this epidemic.

While each culture has its own view of guns and gun ownership, there are some rational ways to arm a population to deter lone wolf acts of terror. While respecting France’s long history of gun control, it would make sense to empower any ex-military or police-trained individual to conceal carry. That would add 50-75,000 potentially armed Frenchmen to deter the kind of mass slaughters we witnessed at the Bataclan where gunmen are allowed to reload and reload. It would be a right but not an obligation and anyone electing to participate should be recognized as a type of national guard who act out of duty to an exigent circumstance. Active military would also have the right while in civilian clothes or off duty.

I would empower Americans similarly, a national right to carry for those so trained and vetted. Not unlike airline marshals, the unknown good-guy-with-a-gun is a powerful deterrent.

Our next president has a lot of damage to repair from Obama’s divisive and dispassionate style of governing. The world has unraveled as Americans are as divided as ever. Hillary will be more of the same. So will anti-immigration, pro-prison law and order Republicans. We need a leader who inspires and can lower the rhetoric long enough to get Americans going on the same path. Are we wise enough to find that person.

The anti-refugee hysteria on the part of many of my closest friends in government is distressing. It gives way to the worst impulses. None want any responsibility for why they are at our doorstep : Obama’s willful abandonment of the Syrian people when timely support would have had great effect. Now we reap the whirlwind. Like Bush 41 did to the Shia of Iraq, like Clinton did to the Tutsi’s in Rwanda and 43 did to the moderate Sunni’s in Iraq, American presidents can facilitate mass slaughter by their failures to act.

Rahm Emanuel should not only resign but serve some time for delaying the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting. Emanuel, a Clinton protege, takes a page from the Clinton playbook: Cover it up, delay it, hide it, deny it, demonize the other side, do just anything to put personal reward over the good of the people they are elected to serve. Rahm didn’t give a rat’s ass about McDonald. Reelection was way more important. How else can he preside over these black people that are owned by the Democrats worse than any Plantation owner controlled their ancestors. When one group votes lockstep without much accountability, it will soon become taken for granted and used.

If Hillary had 61,000 emails in four years, half of which she deleted, there needs to be an accounting of what she did with her time. When did being Secretary of State become a part time job? At 4 minutes per email, working 10 hour days, she wasted 200 days on “yoga appointments and Chelsea’s decorator”. She is a lawyer, and knows lawyers are not permitted to delete emails that could even have the possibility of being subpoenaed. Our government owes the people a forensic look at the legality of her actions. But the larger question: At what point does character overwhelm a win-at-any-cost mentality? Only Democrats know.

More disturbing is the use of the Bill and Hillary Foundation to launder money and gain wealth. They took in $2+ billion and gave only 15% of it to charity. They spent 85% on salaries and “other”. However ‘legal’ this may be, for politicians who build their careers on demonizing the 1% as undeserving get rich in the most undeserving of ways, nakedly selling access to power by scamming the very tax laws for which you demagogue others. Again, Democrats, what is the standard you have for America?

More than one pundit has compared Hillary to Nixon, declaring her more Nixonian than Tricky Dick himself. A better comparison is Napoleon Bonaparte, not the diminutive French emperor but the chief antagonist in George Orwell’s Animal Farm . Recall the time Hillary claimed to turn $1000 into $100,000 by trading cattle futures. For her entire life, she has envied the 1%, craved to be the 1%, willing to sell her soul to be the 1% and willing to cheat the taxpayer to get there. With the foundation, it’s the logical extension of trading cattle mythological futures. Is our integrity so unimportant that we would elect someone like this to be our President?

11/10/16 My faith is restored in the American people. He decades of dishonest behavior was just too much for most Americans, so much so that we elected the second worst person to be our president. At least he has an experienced congress to guide him. Hope for reform. Hope she goes to jail. No way she should get a pass on what others are being jailed for. Her dues are not paid in full.